In late 2018, Latter Day Radio host Martin Tanner and GM Jarrard broadcast several segments on intelligent design and Darwinian evolution on KLO AM1430. Now these discussions have been re-edited and are now available online. In the podcast episodes under the banner of “EVIDENCES & WITNESSES,” they present some powerful arguments for a “designer, creator or supreme intelligence”— whatever name you choose to use—that had a hand in our creation and an interest in our day-to-day lives. The producers surmise that once a person admits that there is evidence for a creator, for life after death or purpose in life, the next questions may very well be: “Who is this entity or person, how can I get to know him or her,” and “What does it–or He or She–require of me?” Once a person reaches this point, then serious inquiry can begin…like a 14-year-old finding a secluded spot in a grove of trees where he can go and learn for himself if there really is a God who hears and answers prayers.
The initial podcasts offering “evidence” or “witnesses” focus on the arguments for “intelligent design,” namely, that when you find a watch in the forest, somewhere there must be a watchmaker. Watches do not assemble themselves, and as two of the guests, Dr. John West and Dr. Ann Gauger, explain, even life at its simplest is infinitely more complex than a watch.
Guests from the Discovery Institute in Seattle make no mention of a God–they do not assume what or who he or she may be. Instead, they construct an increasingly compelling case that things as complex as an animal–vertebrate, invertebrate, complex or simple–cannot simply arise from itself alone through the process of natural selection. Complexity cannot arise from simplicity. Perpetual motion machines are impossible in physics–the science of biology is just as strict. The hosts and guests then examine how evolution and “scientism” have been blended into public policy, particularly as part of a secular materialistic world view.
And yet, people in high places regularly declare things like “science is my savior.”
Publications like Britain’s Telegraph newspaper declare, “The Future of Science: We Will Have the Power of the Gods.” Or, “Only science can save us from climate catastrophe” and “Forget faith–only science can save us.” And once they have claimed for themselves the moral high ground, they sneer and show their contempt for people of faith with comments like “Science flies us to the moon, religion flies us into buildings.” (Physicist Victor Stenger)
More than a generation ago, author and moral philosopher C.S. Lewis decried this viewpoint and dismantled it in his book “The Magician’s Twin.” Science, he said, is now a religion unto itself and called it “scientism,” something indistinguishable from magic and possessing the same medieval characteristics.
He predicted that “The new oligarchy must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists till in the end the politicians merely become the scientists’ puppets.” These present a real danger for religious and political freedom. He explained that there are “very dangerous and malignant consequences when we deify science. pointing to Nazism and Communism and their devotion to “scientific socialism.” The so-called racial science of eugenics in Nazi Germany, for example, had its roots in “barbaric and scientific ideas, abuses of the scientific method, abuses of scientific terminology and faith.” More episodes will also be downloaded. For more information,send an e-mail to studio@latterdayradio.com.
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